IntSim-Onko: Personalised therapy recommendations for cancer patients.
Precision oncology has a high goal: for cancer patients for whom standard procedures are not sufficiently effective, an individualised treatment plan is to be developed after an in-depth analysis of the tumour. For this purpose, an overall picture of the cancer disease must be developed from all the data collected - from clinical course data, laboratory information, pathological findings reports to molecular characterisations of the tumour tissue - and translated into a therapy recommendation. This overall picture is then compared with background knowledge and similar cases from the medical literature. The mathematical description of similarities in turn depends on the type of data. Here, bioinformatics tools and analyses play an essential role, which are becoming increasingly important in medicine and contribute to the continuous improvement of health care. In the IntSim-Onko project, the complex overall images are broken down into their individual factors, their influence on treatment results is systematically analysed and individually weighted with the help of machine learning methods. The algorithms developed from this and the corresponding search functions are intended to advance data-based recommendations in precision oncology and thus decisively support the individualised treatment of cancer patients.
Project management: Dr. Manuela Benary, Charité Comprehensive Cancer Center (CCCC), Charité Campus Mitte and Core Unit Bioinformatics (CUBI) of the Berlin Institute of Health at Charité (BIH); Prof. Dr. Ulrich Keilholz, Director of Charité Comprehensive Cancer Center (CCCC)
FAIR4Rare project: Accompanying Evaluation in the Establishment Process of an Open National Registry for Rare Diseases (NARSE)
Medical registries are an important tool for research, but also for the care of rare diseases. If the findability, accessibility, interoperability and reusability of the data is successful - in short: the implementation of the FAIR principles (findable, accessable, interoperable, reusable) - the translation of new findings and therapy options can be accelerated. The National Registry for Rare Diseases (NARSE) is a medical registry that is currently in the pilot phase and collects data from patients on selected rare diseases for which a therapy option is already on the way. In the accompanying project FAIR4Rare, the project partners from health services research, clinics, registry operators and patient organisations are examining the extent to which NARSE meets with acceptance among users and which further developments are necessary to establish it in such a way that patients with rare diseases are enabled to participate more fairly in our health system. In addition to the survey of users of the registry, it is important to compare it with data from the Medical Informatics Initiative (MII) and with the well-established German Cystic Fibrosis Registry.
Project management: Dr. Josef Schepers, Coordinator for Medical Informatics of the Core Unit eHealth and Interoperability (CEI), Berlin Institute of Health at Charité (BIH)